Tips and Tricks, February, 2004

Here are a couple of ideas to take care of a couple of annoyances—not hardware or software, though. With the increase in devices that require AC adapters, ordinary outlet strips aren’t enough. Either you get more than one or have an enormous device. There’s another solution—1 foot long extension cords. You can get single outlet or y-connector versions that allow you to use a conventional outlet strip and spread your adapters out. It’s still pretty messy, but at least you don’t have to get more expensive outlet strips. The adapters are available at Roger’s System Specialists at some of the shows or at Cables Unlimited on-line at http://www.cablesun.com. You may also find them at other computer or hardware stores.

Speaking of cords and cables, everyone has a mass of cables or power cords behind the computer, the stereo, etc. Get labels. You can use ordinary paper labels and affix them to the cords. They do get a little beat up over time, but it’s better than nothing. I also ran across some labels that clip on to cords from Improvements, http://www.improvementscatalog.com. I’ve bought other stuff from them over the years and have been satisfied with their products.

Did You Know You Have a Notification Area?

In Windows XP (and earlier), the area on the right of the taskbar where your clock displays the time is called the Notification area. You’ll find all kinds of items there depending on what you are running and what’s on your computer. The area includes things like the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon that appears when you plug in a USB device, printer icons, virus program notices, the volume control and so forth. You can customize this area.

The simplest customization is to hide any inactive icons. Right-click anywhere in the taskbar (not on an icon) and select properties from the menu that pops up. The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box pops up.

As you can see, several options are available to you, but the one that interests us is at the bottom—Hide inactive icons. If you check the box, the customize button becomes available. Click on it and you can control the behavior of the icons.

The options under the behavior column include “Hide when inactive,” the most used behavior, but can also “Always Hide” or “Always Show.” If you have an icon in there, that you don’t need for one reason or another, you can make it disappear.

While you are looking at the Taskbar and Menu properties, you may want to note some of the other options. I have from time to time had users complain that the taskbar was on the top or the side and they didn’t want it there. You can configure the taskbar to behave itself by locking it. Then it can’t be moved inadvertently to a new position. You can make the taskbar hide itself automatically. It can be restored by moving the mouse to the very edge of the screen where the taskbar normally resides. Try playing with some of the other options to see what suits you best.

Also note that you can control the start menu that appears when you click on the start button. I am not going to go into all the details, but you can customize all options on the menu that displays when you click on Start. You can also use the “Classic” start menu from earlier versions of Windows and customize it. Play around a little.